Partnership delivers the goods at Tesco

Summary

When the Tesco partnership deal with shopworkers' union Usdaw was launched in a blaze of publicity in March 1998, an editorial in the Times newspaper said it sounded "like an industrial nirvana, blessed with trust and goodwill, loads of consultation and mutual respect". In the second of our occasional series of case studies on the theme of managing competitiveness, we examine the early results of the new approach to employment relations at the UK's most successful food retailer.